Re: What design is: 911 vs. Fleetwood

[Dan Weinreb <address@hidden>]

   Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 18:16:04 -0800 (PST)
   From: Paul Graham <paulgraham@yahoo.com>

   I think the smartest programmers have a lot more power in
   dictating language popularity than most people realize.
   Remember Ada and C?  As I heard it, the DoD required all
   their software to be written in Ada, and you had to get
   an exemption to use anything else.  But the best hackers 
   insisted on using C, and the DoD had to grant so many 
   exemptions that Ada soon became a dead letter.

That's not how I heard it.  I heard that the armed forces programmers
basically wanted to stick with the languages that they were accustomed
to.  These were different languages depending on which service.  If
memory serves, the Army's langauge was FORTRAN and the Air Forces's
language was Jovial.

It would be nice, in a way, to think that the U.S. armed forces make
these decisions based on the opinions and attitudes of their "smartest
programmers".  That isn't consonant with my general impression of how
decision-making is done in the armed forces, but I-am-not-a-soldier...